The Cruelty of Cabeswater
by LunatheLovegood
Summary: When Cabeswater transports Blue back to the time before she met the Raven Boys, it becomes clear that she was sent back with a purpose - to stop herself and Gansey ever meeting. As Blue is confronted with a heartbreaking decision to change her future, and ultimately save Gansey, she's faced with the question of whether it would all be worth it.


Richard Gansey was hearing voices.

They were muffled and unclear. They reminded Gansey of being underwater, where faces and voices became morphed and distorted. Blinking hazily, he gingerly tried to lift his hand to his head, tried to move his fingers at all - but in a blind jolt of panic, realized he was paralyzed. The voices continued, humming and whispering, sometimes even yelling, but while Gansey's mind awoke with panic, his body was painfully motionless, a small pressure progressively growing more and more suffocating as it descended down on to his chest.

If Gansey had nightmares before, they fell blissfully short of this all consuming knowledge that he was alone, and completely, irrevocably out of control.

In his peripheral vision, Gansey saw the silhouette of a girl, slowly making her way towards him. It distantly dawned on him that he was suffering from sleep paralysis. He remembered reading about it once, and recalled that generally it was caused by sleep deprivation (no surprise – he'd been up late working on his model of Henrietta), and that the symptoms, more often than not, involved vivid hallucinations.

If this girl was a hallucination, she didn't look like it. Nor did she look like a monster, or a demon, as Gansey had recalled were common illusions during an episode. No, as she came closer and stood over Gansey's vulnerable and deceptively still body, she just looked incredibly lonely.

With short, choppy hair, held in one perilous ponytail with an uncountable array of multicoloured hairpins, she regarded Gansey with an overwhelming sadness. Abruptly, Gansey connected the voices he heard to the girl before him, and as if his head had finally broken above water, their undecipherable murmuring was shot through with a clear, articulate resonance as the visions and voices suddenly synced together.

"Listen, Gansey - Gansey! I know that you can't move right now, but you can here me, can't you?"

Unable to utter a sound, Gansey was internally reeling at the stranger's drop of his name, even more so at her casual acknowledgement of his state of paralysis. He knew for certain that he'd never met her before, and if he had, surely he'd remember someone like her; her patchwork dress and multi-coloured hairpins weren't something a person could easily forget. Gansey's confusion was plunged even further when he recognised that the tone that the girl had adopted was one of familiar intimacy.

"I know you're probably confused right now," A nervous laugh. "And God knows _I_ am _._ I don't even know why Cabeswater dumped me here. In the middle of the night, may I add." The girl huffed a bit and shook her head. Suddenly, it occurred to Gansey that the girl could very well be insane. And he still couldn't move. "But listen, I think something's happened to me. I think I know what it is, but if it turns out I'm right-" Her eyes gleamed with unshed tears as she leaned over Gansey with pent up fear. "I'm not sure I'm strong enough to endure it. The worst thing is, is that you wouldn't even be effected by it. But maybe that's the point."

Slowly, the girl lowered herself down to sit next to Gansey as her eyes raked over the darkened Monmouth Manufacturing. "Huh." She murmured to herself. "You haven't done as much on the model of Henrietta yet." Despite the evident tears in her eyes, her mouth quirked up with a sardonic smile. "And God, Gansey, I'd almost call you a slacker. Your notes on Glendower are _painfully_ short." Her eyes roamed even further, with the rapt attention of a child. "And you have more mint plants. A lot more. Jesus, Gansey, how many mint plants do you go through?" Finally, her eyes landed on him and with a small intake of air she whispered "But you, Gansey. It's the same you. And you're looking at me, but… you're not seeing me."

Attentively, Gansey tried to move his fingers, tried to move something, and with a surprise, managed to twitch his thumb. If he could just slowly work his way up…

The girl dumped her head in her hands. "This is a mess. This is a big mess. I don't even know how this is possible. And now I can't stop _talking_ , and they say that happens with victims of shock. Meanwhile, you're in sleep paralysis, probably having a worse time than ever; not being able to move and all." She slumped further into herself as she looked at Gansey with unimaginable regret. "I guess you're chalking this all up to either a hallucination or a crazy stranger who managed to break into your house."

Ever so slightly, he managed to move his hand.

"But…no. I have to tell you. If I'm wrong, then worse case scenario, I'll look like an idiot. But if I'm right, then…" She averted her eyes, seemingly out of misery, and Gansey yet again, tried to move his arm. With unsuspected success, it shifted slightly across the mattress, and when the girl locked eyes with him again, he stilled.

"Gansey, I think I've somehow-"

And then the light turned on.

Ronan, stood in the doorway, stared at the girl with a mix of shock and his ever-present simmering anger. The girl cursed under her breath, and abruptly darted towards the doorway, disappearing before Ronan could even register the scene playing out before him. As Gansey slowly started to lose his grasp on consciousness again, Ronan hurtling after the girl with reckless abandon, Gansey's last thought was that if the girl had indeed been some sort of imagined monster or nightmarish demon, than surely, Gansey should've been petrified. He should've woken up from fear. He should've bucked and yelled and struggled.

He shouldn't have, by all accounts, felt heartbroken.


End file.
